Movement For Seniors?

The subject of movement for seniors popped up on my thread. Whether “mere” health or the desire to learn a physical skill (say, martial arts) is a serious concern, as easing back into aliveness can be a challenge. Here are some rules.

1. Health before fitness. FITNESS is what people think they want. But fitness is “how high, how far, how fast, how heavy” and so on. PERFORMANCE. But while this is fine, what is more important is HEALTH, which is basically the core functioning of the organism. We can measure this in things like quality of sleep, how you feel when you wake up in the morning, general energy, pain-free joints, vibrant sex drive, and so on. The healthy human animal. While sports, martial arts and so forth can certainly have aspects that deal with this, THAT IS NOT THEIR INTENT. The general intent of sports and martial arts are the refinement of hunting and fighting skills. Survival. Health is secondary to slaying that bear, or fighting off those bandits. Here are some health-first activities. Pick one and master it.
2. Yoga. My top choice. Hatha and pranayama yoga are the highest, more refined health disciplines available to the general public. If you follow a few rules, and treat it as a SCIENCE to research and deepen, you will be colossally rewarded. The biggest problem with yoga is that you often don’t feel the effects until you stop doing it for a while and then come back to it: then, to your horror, you might realize that qualities you’d taken for granted were very special indeed. Want to start martial arts training? Start with yoga…